The Penn Libraries and South Asia Studies present a space for technology orientation, where participants will strive for a nuanced and informed understanding of the possibilities and limitations of critical digital humanities tools, particularly Computational Text Analysis (CTA) of content found in manuscripts, inscriptions, maps, and other historical documents.
Hosted by: Research Data and Digital Scholarship
The discussions in these sessions aim to bring together South Asia scholars, digital humanities specialists, data librarians, subject specialists, research software & programming engineers, and manuscript studies curators to engage in conversation about the field of collections as data at large.
Andrew Ollett, Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, will deliver the keynote address "Texts as Data: Tools and Perspectives for South Asianists."
The workshop will be held from 9:30am - 5:00pm on October 10 and from 9:30am - 4:00pm on October 11. The talks are open to the public, may be presented in a hybrid format, and will be recorded for sharing at a later date. See below for complete program schedule.
South Asia Studies scholars are invited to apply to participate in hands-on workshop sessions held during this event. These sessions will introduce scholars of South Asia to digital tools for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) for the practical purpose of searching through texts for specific keywords. OCR and HTR make it possible to transform archival sources into searchable texts. Participants in the hands-on sessions must be prepared to attend both days of the workshop as well as a prior software installation session.
This workshop is sponsored by the Department of South Asia Studies, Research Data and Digital Scholarship's AI Literacy Interest Group, the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, The Penn South Asia Center, the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, and the Wolf Humanities Center.
Kashi Gomez will set the stage for the workshop, contextualizing the need for Digital Humanities in South Asia Studies and the collaborations that make it possible.
Who is this workshop for?
Kashi Gomez, Lecturer in Sanskrit, University of Pennsylvania
Jajwalya Karajgikar, Applied Data Science Librarian, University of Pennsylvania
Following a brief introduction to the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies and Cultural Heritage Computing, Dot, Eug, and Jaj will showcase the curated South Asian manuscripts from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts up close.
Dot Porter, SIMS Curator of Digital Humanities, University of Pennsylvania
Andrew Ollett will share the potential of tools like OCR (Optical Character recognition) and HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) of South Asian languages for "normal science" and the prospects of new, problem-oriented, data-aware programs of research.
Andrew Ollett is an Associate Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. See the Resources page on his website for more information on his Digital Humanities work.
Lunch will be served in the Research Data & Digital Scholarship Exchange (RDDSx), Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, First Floor.
This is a hands-on session. Guests who have applied and been accepted can participate; other workshop attendees are welcome to observe.
Familiarize yourself with the basics of the computational tools that are used in text analysis research.
Jajwalya Karajgikar, Applied Data Science Librarian, University of Pennsylvania
This is a hands-on session. Guests who have applied and been accepted can participate; other workshop attendees are welcome to observe.
Set up and prepare your documents for OCR and HTR using BRISS and Google Cloud Vision API.
Kashi Gomez, Lecturer in Sanskrit, University of Pennsylvania
This is a hands-on session. Guests who have applied and been accepted can participate; other workshop attendees are welcome to observe.
Transform the images of South Asian manuscripts from the special collections into searchable text using Google Cloud Vision and Python.
Andrew Ollett, Associate Professor, University of Chicago
This is a hands-on session. Guests who have applied and been accepted can participate; other workshop attendees are welcome to observe.
Build your own personal archive of machine readable texts. Participants will try digitizing printed texts and handwritten manuscripts to compare the two.
Reception will be held in the Research Data & Digital Scholarship Exchange (RDDSx), Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, First Floor.
Jaj will share an autoethnographic account of her journey into Digital Humanities & South Asia Studies and all the projects she has worked on in various coursework & instruction.
What does transdisciplinary research look like?
Jajwalya Karajgikar, Applied Data Science Librarian, University of Pennsylvania
This is a hands-on session. Guests who have applied and been accepted can participate; other workshop attendees are welcome to observe.
Participants will explore some immediate possibilities for interacting with newly searchable texts with quick lessons on how to use BBEdit to perform a Grep Search, Google Pinpoint and Voyant Tools to perform computational text analysis.
Kashi Gomez, Lecturer in Sanskrit, University of Pennsylvania
Jajwalya Karajgikar, Applied Data Science Librarian, University of Pennsylvania
Lunch will be served in the Research Data & Digital Scholarship Exchange (RDDSx), Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, First Floor.
This is a hands-on session. Guests who have applied and been accepted can participate; other workshop attendees are welcome to observe.
Reflecting on the digital tools introduced during this workshop, participants will work in groups to conceptualize possible research questions and projects.
This is a hands-on session. Guests who have applied and been accepted can participate; other workshop attendees are welcome to observe.
Participants will present their ideas about future data-driven research questions and projects. Participants will reflect on the struggles and successes they had learning and using the digital humanities tools learned in this workshop.
Image Credits (clockwise from top left): Kislak Special Collections 1. Rag Darshan, 1799; 2. Midrash Lamentations, 1850; 3. Sinhalese protective charm yantras, 1700; 4. Pravacanasāroddhārasūtra, 1652.